The Thanksgiving holiday has come and gone and I hope it brought joy to your family.  I wonder, though, if we are more full of turkey or more full of realizing how blessed we are to know God as our Heavenly Father and Jesus our Savior? The freedoms we enjoy living with in America are amazing but our consumer culture always seems to leave us wanting more.  If we are more thankful, shouldn’t we consider reaching out to people with the love of God these next few weeks before Christmas? If God loves the whole world as the book of John 3:16 states, shouldn’t we have a deep concern for the world that Christ died for?

As we approach the holiday celebrations of Thanksgiving and Christmas, I thought it would be healthy to remind myself and others about just how important it is to cultivate a thankful heart.  I can certainly get wrapped up in the spiritual war that is going on in our country. I constantly need to be reminded of the words of the apostle Paul when he states clearly that we don’t just wrestle with natural things, like politics and general nastiness, but we wrestle with all the evil and wickedness of a Satanic agenda. That agenda is eradicating the peace of God and promoting hatred and distrust.  That can not happen.  A spirit of thankfulness is what will miraculously bring forth growth and victory!

This is the third article on what it means to be fruitful and how many people are more interested in just looking good.  This is partially because being fruitful is hard work and people are normally looking for the easiest way around things. If you haven’t read the first two articles on the same subject I would encourage you to do so before reading this one.

In my last post on being fruitful or just looking good we talked about the law of God in “Sowing & Reaping” and how God established rewards for working hard. In our current cultural climate, man continues to try to push away the idea of God setting the rules of the universe by citing all the technological advancement.  No matter what man tries to create to prove he is in charge, everything in our world is interconnected and shows the fingerprint of our creator. 

This will be the last in this series and I hope you have been blessed and challenged by the subject matter. I would love to hear your feedback on what you got out of the topic. If you have a unique story of a dark time in your life when God seemed silent yet the Lord taught you a valuable truth or lesson I would love to hear about it.

A common problem for many Christians is that they base their beliefs on superstition and legend rather than on scripture. Most will say they have a biblical foundation for their faith, but when questioned with deeper issues beyond simple concepts like John 3:16 they often are lost and can’t explain what they believe nor why. It is my experience that when we can’t explain what and why we believe, we often don’t really believe it. what we say we do. Somehow we have relied on sermons or Christian books rather than digging into the scriptures to discover what is really true and what is just religion or good ideas. 

The last article on “Are We Running From God’s Purpose?” used the book of Jonah.  I used the text and story of Jonah to start partly because it’s a famous book that most people have heard in Sunday School or from a sermon. I wanted to show how Jesus would try to expose people’s excuses for not living for God when they called themselves God’s people. If you haven’t read part one on this topic, start there.

I have been amazed at how the “Testimony” of some people seems to be all that is needed to convince a group of people of some declared “Truth” with no or little evidence. I think we used to be more objective in our beliefs and persuasion but now we seem to be captivated by any strange idea or accusation. Maybe it’s because we are so used to “Instant” information with our technology that we no longer have the time or patience to “Verify” before we develop an opinion.

My blog is focused on the human soul so I look for topics to write about that hopefully will cause readers to evaluate their lives based on scripture rather than on the latest trend or what is often taught in schools. Human logic is so twisted because we refuse to consider God’s thoughts or ways. Human logic often is less than honest again because of a lack of information from scripture. Even among Christian believers, scripture is often the last place people turn to acquire facts or wisdom. Instead, especially among the young, reasoning is now more about how we feel.  If we feel someone is a racist, well they must be. This circular logic reinforces the pathway to a total breakdown in the human soul.  The worst part is that it happens while the person or persons think they are headed in the right direction.